To be honest, I don’t know quite what they were expecting to happen when they decided to ram what they suspected to be an ambush. Mine laying is pretty basic when it comes to vehicular ambushes. Hell, they were fairly common in general as long as the one laying them didn’t care about blowing up the surroundings. My recent experience with Hope in the Underground comes to mind.
As soon as the mine blew, covering the APC in fire and sand so thick the wolf’s shared vision couldn’t see through it, the Crimson Company moved into action. Red-Six moved, speeding up significantly as it raced toward the safety of the Gold blockade. Not sure why we were using our goods as defenses in the first place, but Captain Roger probably had his own considerations. Speaking of, the man shouted across the comms, "Weapons free!"
Dunes all around the ambush point shifted on Lia’s magical screen, bringing my attention back to the wolf's perspective. Heavily modded cars, marked with symbols of… jackals? I’d never heard about a jackal Nomad group. Anyway, about two dozen cars burst from the dunes in a spray of sand, revealing their positions. Another dozen came from over the nearby dunes, having been summoned by the explosion. We were grossly outnumbered by one to three.
The jackal-marked vehicles looked… kinda weak though? Nowhere near as dangerous compared to the Hawks who patrolled around Aythryn City. Their cars looked as if they’d been scavenged from the sunbaked remnants of a nuked city. Every one of them was covered in a fine layer of rust with only the attached guns looking slightly shiny, though even then the guns looked ancient.
Since the APC had run ahead, we were out of the direct ambush, allowing several long moments to pass as every gun in the Crimson Caravan locked onto the jackal group. The air lit up with the sound of a thousand bullets as the heavy guns on each of the Prowlers opened fire under Captain Roger’s orders.
‘Course, they weren’t the only ones shooting. Fire erupted from the ambushes as they returned shots in a frantic array. Bullets flew, pinging off vehicles as both sides vied for the upper hand. The ground erupted into sandy sprays of debris, lowering the visibility the longer the firefight went.
Red-Six breezed into the blockade, the armor only catching a few shots. I could feel my heart rate jumping as we entered direct combat. Especially considering we were outnumbered. I nervously looked around, wondering what the next plan of action would be-
Only to find the rest of the cabin in absolute tranquility. Sergeant Hampton was back to sleep, loudly snoring as if we weren’t in the middle of a combat zone. Our gunner, the one I expected to be the most attentive to our surroundings, was back to drawing on his sketchpad as if nothing happened. He was just finishing up a gorgeous drawing of a bouquet of roses.
Lia was the only one to have any reaction, though her face was tinged with obvious longing as she stared through the wolf’s vision. That longing faded as her eyes shifted around from one side to the other. She met my eyes, immediately bringing a finger to her lips to shush me with a giddy expression.
She raised her hand, rubbing one of her rings as she started to-
“Cut it out, Lia. No point in wasting your magic.” Renold called as he lounged back and idly watched one of the jackal’s vehicles explode in a ball of fire under the might of several concentrated HMGs. A dozen secondary explosions quickly followed as the ordinance kept in the vehicle started to go off.
"Ah, you're no fun." Lia sulked back crossing her double arms. The sulking only lasted a few moments before she brought the screen back and happily watched it.
“You guys sure seem laid back.” Maybe coming out here with these wack jobs wasn’t such a good idea.
”Why wouldn’t we be?” Lia laughed gleefully as she made the screen larger. I watched as a bullet caught one of the jackal cars, this one covered in spikes and rusty metal, in the tire. It slowed just enough that the car behind it rammed up into it, launching the driver through the windshield and out into the spikes. His broken body hung from the rusty spikes as the car drove away only to be blown up a moment later.
Lia’s giant wolf sprite shifted, giving us a view of our side. We‘d taken no losses. The guns strapped to the jackals’ vehicles were too low caliber to punch through the armor, at least for the most part. Radio chatter indicated there were a few injured from stray rounds but nobody was dead yet.
A thunderous roar erupted from the jackals' side, drawing the wolf to look back towards the approaching ambush. They were just about to hit our defensive line, fully committing to a forward assault-
The roar came again, this time followed by dozens of lights flickering in the localized sandstorm brought about by all the commotion. Almost immediately, three of the jackals crashed as a storm of bullets erupted from behind. The sound was overwhelming as at least hundreds if not thousands of rounds a second came from behind the enemy.
The APC rolled back into the fight, lacking even a scratch to its paint as if it hadn’t just face-tanked a land mine. The dozens of guns all over the porcupine-looking vehicle erupted in bolts of fire, causing the entire vehicle to look like an avenging angel set aflame with righteous fury.
The main turret on top of the thing fired a shot, the sound loud enough to cause the layer of sand floating around to clear off entirely from its body for a few moments as the soundwave exploded outward. The massive round hit one of the better-armored jackals as if a divine smite, immediately causing the thing to explode into a ball of fire that caused one other car to crash.
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Heavily armored and armed, the destructive APC rejoined the battle, causing the offensive push from the jackals to shatter as they tried to flee. Not that the Crimson Company would let them. Our side’s guns never stopped firing, smoothly wiping out the entire ambush as if it wasn’t even a problem. And it wasn't.
I shifted in my seat, giving another look around the Crimson Company with renewed insight. Really, I don’t know what I was expecting. This was a high payout gig handed over by none other than Athena. I should’ve trusted her judgment more with who she fired. No way she’d hire a bunch of idiots from a weak mercenary corp to go scavenge an ancient stash of loot. Especially Acumen Industrial's loot.
“See? Nothing to worry about. Our company is one of the best in Aythryn City, outside of the megacorp-sponsored ones.” Lia chuckled to herself and slapped the red crossed fang patch on her shoulder with pride.
Renold kicked the Prowler back into gear as damage reports were relayed through the radios. Minor injuries from stray flesh wounds, but nothing the medics couldn’t fix up quite easily.
A call from Captain Roger came. “Clear the field. You lot know the drill. Red-Six, send up Red-Metal to check the T-1. Something about a leaking fuel line.”
”That’s you.” Renolds informed me as he drove over to the APC. Red-Metal was quite the name.
Leaking fuel line, eh? Should be an easy enough fix. I had us stop by one of the flipped jackal cars to scavenge some parts. I ignored the foul stench radiating from the vehicle and the blood pouring through the gaps of the crushed driver’s seat as I grabbed what I thought I’d need before heading over to the APC and getting to work.
— — —
Stuarton was in sight as day turned to night. It had been for the past hour since we were coming down a mountain into it, but now it was truly close.
The place was closer to a town than a city with only one skyscraper in the mix. The town itself was almost entirely dark, though there were lights scattered around. Could definitely see it had been long since abandoned from way out here.
Flickering lights, run by long-abandoned power stations barely clinging to life, cast distorted ghosts of advertisements that seemed to have a haunting quality to them as they glitched out and swayed around in inhuman movements. Years of disrepair left once majestic holograms and progressive ads in their current poor state.
The sun, our constant torturer throughout the long day of travel, finally dropped below a distant mountain, casting long shadows across Stuarton. The last light faded as the surrounding dunes lost their sunlit luster. The convoy came to a stop just before leaving the mountain.
“Are we not going down?” Not that I was complaining. I’d rather stay up here than go into the ghost town, especially with all the glitched-out tech down there. There was no telling what hid in the dark. And we were close to Dune Walker territory, so they’d be showing up sooner or later if we were unlucky. I’d rather not get trapped in the city by them like some kind of cheesy horror movie.
Renold shook his head slowly. “Boss is worried about Thermoguants popping up soon.”
”Thermoguant?” What the hell was that? Must be something quite dangerous to make the guy who ordered his APC to face tank an ambush wary.
We came to a complete stop on a rocky outcropping just before a cliff. The entire convoy pulled into a blockade formed by the trucks once more. Guess we were setting up camp right up here?
”They’re like, um, like mosquitos, right? But they’re attracted to heat and are about the size of a dog. Oh! And they use swarm tactics.” Lia shuddered. “I once had one latch onto my face till best-boy Silver pulled it off. Still have nightmares.”
Yonrow tapped me on the shoulder and passed over his notepad. “Here.”
It was a realistic, at least I would assume so based on his skills, sketch of a massive insect hugging the windshield of a prowler. The thing did look like a mosquito, but it looked as though it had a layer of additional chitin acting like armor for the thing. A needle longer than the entirety of its body clacked against the windshield as two pincers on either side of its head grasped onto the vehicle.
The drawing was done from inside the passenger seat, so it was rather horrifying as the giant needle of a mouth tried to force its way through the window. Even worse, there were dozens if not hundreds of other Thermoguants back behind the one on the window, actively generating more nightmare fuel the longer I looked at it.
“You said they were attracted to heat?” I asked.
Yonrow took his sketchpad back as Lia replied. “Chek. They’re nocturnal though, so they tend to gather around sunspots for the first few hours a night before going off to feed. They bunch up around old tech that’s still running in old abandoned towns like this.”
That’s a relief. If they were attracted to heat, I could just activate Cold-Blooded and none of them would come for me right? Sure, it’d suck for everyone else, but I’d be safe.
Renold killed the engine as the squad’s radios crackled to life. Captain Roger called through the line to the entire company. “We’ll be out here for the night. No fires. Dinner in an hour. Red-One is on the first watch. Red-Two, you’re second. Red-Five, you have third.”
I stepped out of the vehicle, instantly feeling a chill. The shadows were freezing compared to the heat that we just basked in moments ago. The constant wind blowing didn’t help either. I immediately swapped back over to the poncho's heated setting as I stretched out, feeling several bones crack.
If I was this sore from just sitting here, I can’t even imagine how Lia must feel. Hmm… I’d never thought about this before, but if I had chrome limbs I wouldn't get sore anymore, right? Could Renold just sit there for several days without feeling anything but mental fatigue? Or maybe not. My chrome eye had a different kind of soreness every once in a while. At least it didn't generate gunk that had to be wiped out on occasion like my first cybernetic eye though.
My gaze caught on the sky. It seemed so boundless out here away from the towering architecture. So free. And the stars! I’d never seen so many of them. So pretty. Course, the atmosphere still blocked quite a bit of them out even if the light pollution didn’t. I can’t even imagine how majestic the night sky used to look a hundred years ago. People back then were truly blessed.
It’d really be something to get out into space and travel the cosmos… unfortunately, such a thing just wasn’t meant for me. Unless I got a job with BosSpace, I guess, but the chances of that were… Well, I’d have a higher chance of becoming a corporate executive for one of the Big 7. Still, it would be so cool to go to one of the colonies on another planet. How different everything must be up there. Maybe if I got a high enough Tech level I could build my own ship?
I peeked back into the Prowler as everyone except Hampton, who was still passed out as if he’d been drugged, started hustling and bustling to get camp set up. I followed the pack to set up for the night. Hopefully, it’d be uneventful. Then again, when has my luck ever held up?